It's always sad to see a team eliminated on The Amazing Race, but it was particularly sad to see Mel and Mike go. They were very sweet to each other while running the race, and eventually had to give up because it was too cold wading through the mud in Japan. Here's what Mel, the 70-year old father of the father-son duo, had to say about his Amazing Race experience.

It seems like a lot of the teams are helping each other out and working together this season, why is that?

I don't know. You have more empathy with others team when you all understand how difficult the race is. The first time you are really competitive and the second time you are still competitive but you understand the pressure that you are under. I don't know what it would have been like at the end but in the beginning people are much more willing to help each other out because you understand the positions the other teams are in.

Did you have a different strategy going into The Amazing Race a second time?

The second time we learned that we needed to never stop racing. We should never take time out to celebrate, relax or lie down. We had to keep racing. Also the second, we knew going in that if we got a bad taxi driver we would get out. We didn't want to let a taxi driver control our fate.

Mel, you've raced around the world twice now while the rest of us sat on our couches; any advice for staying active?

At 70 I see people getting into various kinds of physicalities like diabetes and dementia and being active can help with that. The race was a chance for me to stay active and build my quality of life. Being active sustains life and improves the quality. That's all I know.

Any teams you're rooting for?

I'm rooting for all of them to survive because this year was so much harder than before. I'm hoping for the best for each of them.

Do you still feel like you have "unfinished business"?

Oh yeah! I have unfinished business. I haven't won yet and I will have unfinished business until I do. Maybe someday I will get a third chance at it.

After racing around the world in Season 14 of The Amazing Race, Mel White and his son Mike returned to the popular CBS reality series to compete in The Amazing race: Unfinished Business. Although Mel and Mike White were strong competitors in Season 14, their second turn at The Amazing Race gave the father and son team a few unwelcome and unexpected surprises when seventy year old Mel learned that his body couldn't withstand the demands of another Amazing Race.

Although Mel shook of a slight leg injury in Sydney, Australia, Mike watched his father brave frigid temperatures in Japan when the two struggled during a muddy roadblock that forced both Mel and Mike to leave the race early for the confines of an Amazing Race medical van. As it turned out, based on what Mel revealed to TheDeadbolt, the popular father and son team on The Amazing Race could make good on their unfinished business due to hypothermia.

The day after Mel White and his son Mike were eliminated from The Amazing Race, TheDeadbolt went one-on-one with Mel to learn more about their muddy roadblock, what happened during the task, how they felt running The Amazing Race for a second time, and what Mel learned about himself after a valiant attempt to take care of unfinished business.

THE DEADBOLT: This time around, did the entire race feel like a roadblock to you guys?

MEL WHITE: [laughs] Well said! Yeah, it was much more difficult physically and the stamina was tough. The first day we ran, after flying for about twenty eight hours, we ran four to five miles with our packs on besides all of the other games. So the second leg starts with me falling over and Michael crying without realizing that was at the end of five grueling miles in about six grueling hours. At the end of that, when I fell over, Mike said to me, “Do you want to stop dad?” I said, “No. We don’t want to stop.” I was just dehydrated and exhausted. But by then we knew something was up. This is going to be another kind of race.

THE DEADBOLT: How close were you to leaving the race in Sydney when you got hurt?

WHITE: I wasn’t close at all. I was gasping for hours when we were running. We were literally running for hours. Mike was watching me deteriorate physically. So when I fell over, he thought I had a heart attack or stroke or something. He was ready to give up. But I assured him that I would be the one to decide when I was ready to get out and I was just exhausted.

He literally pulled me out of that mud pit and then agreed to let me go back in. Then we measured our temperatures and the medic said we both had hypothermia. So we couldn’t go back in and we didn’t quit. We didn’t lose, but we went out. [laughs]

THE DEADBOLT: When it was all said and done, how long were you guys in the mud?

WHITE: I was in just short of an hour and Michael was in for about forty five minutes. Then he came out and watched for awhile and he was just shaking. Then he was saying “We’ve got to get my father out of there.” He yelled and yelled, “Dad, you’ve got to get out.” But I had mud in my eyes, nose and ears and he insisted on them getting me out. It was his good intuition because my temperature had fallen really low. He was wise because I didn’t want to quit. At seventy, I didn’t want to be the old guy to quit. I hated it, but he pulled me out.

THE DEADBOLT: Do you think you guys you could’ve completed the other roadblock with the waterfall given how cold that was?

WHITE: Yeah. A minute under that kind of freezing water against sixty minutes up to your knees in the muddy water? Yeah, no worries. We chose the wrong option. Then we were so muddy and it took so long to find the frog and by then we had hypothermia. So to choose the other one was impossible.

THE DEADBOLT: How was the mud compared to the cold you felt in Russia the last time?

WHITE: So much colder. I think when you’re in icy water, literally, and they’re throwing icy water at you and we’re digging in the mud - my arm was up to the elbow buried in mud and I was just kind of sloshing around in this stuff for that long. It was the most miserable experience of my life physically. I can’t tell you how miserable I was. I don’t know how cold it was. But I’m going to tell you the hypothermia was real and we couldn’t stop shaking for about an hour.

THE DEADBOLT: So what did you learn about yourself this time, as compared to the last time?

WHITE: Well, the last time we learned two things. One, you never quit racing. The brother and sister team was a good example of that. We’d sit on a plane and they would be bargaining with passengers to get in the front seats and they never stopped racing. The other thing was to take control of your life. If a cab driver is not going where you want, get out. But this time we didn’t last long enough to try out our formula.

On this race, I learned - and I hate to say this - but a seventy year old body, you don’t know exactly whether you’re strong enough to get through. I got hurt right at the beginning so that I was in pain with every step. I’ve never had trouble running or walking. So again, I learned that I’m old and that wasn’t pleasant. Old has certain types of problems and one of them physical. So I learned something I didn’t want to learn.

THE DEADBOLT: Well, there is an upside. At least you didn’t get hit by a watermelon.

WHITE: [laughs] I remember that! I remember seeing that after it happened. I've always wanted to asker her, how did that feel getting a watermelon in the face?

THE DEADBOLT: It certainly left a memorable impression, that's for sure.

RNO: What’s been going on with you and your son since the last time you were on the race?

Mel: Michael’s running a show for HBO, a series called Enlightened. He apologizes for not being on the call today because he had to keep the whole cast together and keep finishing – they had a deadline.

Then I’m standing in awe watching what he’s doing. As the tired old fart, I get to live vicariously through Michael doing what he’s dreamed of doing since he was nine years old. And I’m writing still, and I spoke five times this weekend in Orange County. I’m still traveling around.

One thing I do now is avoid mud pits – at any cost.

RNO: That seems a good take away from the race. Going into this race, did you approach it any differently than you did your first race?

Mel: Yeah, I think we learned two lessons. One was never stop racing. The brother and sister team [Tammy & Victor] that won on Season 14… We’d get on a plane and be so tired and relieved we’d fall asleep. Then we’d wake up and they would have bargained with passengers at the front of the plane and traded seats with them – and they would be off the plane first. They never stopped racing.

The other thing is we had to take better control of our lives. If the taxi driver went the wrong direction, we had to get him to stop and just get out. But we weren’t in the race long enough to try out those newly learned lessons!

RNO: Well they sound like good race tips. And I’m sorry you didn’t last longer because you’re one of my favorite teams. You have a great father-son dynamic. Mel, you didn’t want to risk a change of planes for the possible 15-minute advantage – and due to the delay with the second plane it turned out you were right. Did you two talk about that on the leg at all?

Mel: One thing we don’t do is we don’t look back. In fact, since they were little children, we had a no blame rule in our house. Never blame somebody for something bad that has gone wrong. Just go with it.

I think we could have won the first season if we had taken that Fast Forward. And to go to an orphanage, I mean Gary (my partner) and I have an orphanage in Cambodia. It would have been perfect! But, after that [not taking the Fast Forward], we never looked back. Only one day, a month later, Michael said, “Dad, we should have taken the Fast Forward.”

I think since we’re in this race for the fun of it, if we even found ourselves on the verge of some kind of a disagreement or something, we would remind each other, “This is for fun.” It makes a big difference just to be doing it for the fun of it.

RNO: The flight you were on landed about 45 minutes after the other flight, yet it seemed you all caught up quite a bit to the teams on the first flight – with Zev & Justin even winning the leg. What was going on with getting to the tasks in Japan?

Mel: The problem in Japan is Narita is so far from Tokyo and Yokohama is so far from Tokyo in the other direction. We had no maps. We had no ways of knowing anything except by asking, and everybody we asked only spoke Japanese.

One bad turn and it would take you way out of your way before you even stopped because you were on a freeway. So one of the reasons was just plain trying to navigate across that town for a Roadblock and then a Detour… That’s how we got slowed down.

Then Michael and I, we passed the train station in that little city in Japan [where the Detour options were] and we just didn’t see it. We drove all across that town, over and over again, trying to see it. That was a mistake – not to get out and ask… First of all, if you ask somebody the crew has to get a signed permission from them, [so it takes longer than you’d think]. So we got way behind, and by the time we got there, it was dark and cold and miserable.

RNO: What made you choose the Frog of Luck Detour option? The word “luck” in a challenge always makes me nervous.

Mel: Let’s just say stupidity. You know, you’re out there in your diaper and you think, “I’ll find it, I’ll find it, I’ll find it,” and to get out of there and go on to something else… It was almost prohibitive. It would have taken so much time just to get to somewhere else. So we stuck it out like idiots.

RNO: So, the word “luck” didn’t scare you off that Detour choice? The word “luck” in a challenge always makes me nervous.

Mel: Luck is a major factor in the race.

RNO: Why did the four teams who ended up on the later flight want to band together in Japan? That didn’t seem like a great idea for teams running behind.

Mel: Yeah, that was another mistake. We had been on the same flight and we had conversations and were trying to ally with each other. When coming out of that parking garage into the streets, we thought, “Well, maybe somebody will be smart enough to know how to get us there.” So, we made a mistake because there was just too much stopping and starting before we realized we had to head out on our own.

I don’t know how it happened. We were all on a flight together so we thought, “Let’s just go together.” It didn’t work. We teamed with Luke & Margie, and then the Goths and [Jaime & Cara] joined the procession. It’s just one of those things that happened.

RNO: We know it was right around freezing when you got to the Frog of Luck challenge. How long were you searching for the frog before Mike pulled the plug?

Mel: I was, by clock, about four or five minutes less than an hour. My body temperature was dropping so much, and I was shaking so much, people could see that. He got out at about 45 minutes and started arguing with people saying, “You’ve got to get my father out of there!” He was yelling at me, but I couldn’t hear because there was mud in my ears… And mud in my eyes, and mud in my face, and oh my gosh!

Finally [Mike] convinced one of the producers to go get me and get me out. The guy waded in and I – literally, I was down on my hands and knees, covered with mud, freezing cold… It was the worst moment of my life, physically. So when the guy said, “You’ve got to come out,” I said, “No. I’m going to find the frog.” But I was so relieved when Michael insisted.

Then the medical people found out we had hypothermia. They had to treat us for that.

RNO: Did the producers have a limit on how long you could spend in the mud pit searching for the frog?

Mel: No, they didn’t do that because it was daytime and they pictured it as a nice little tradition. Everybody could just jump in the mud and play around a little and find a frog. They didn’t think that the oldest fart in the history of the game would get out there for an hour [at night]. They never contemplated that possibility.

RNO: It was very impressive to see you continuing on in that situation. Going back to the very first leg in Australia, what did you think when Phil told you at the very first Pit Stop that you were still racing?

Mel: Well, I’m into non-violence… normally. But I was thinking, “Phil, no matter how much I like you, I hate you at this moment!” We literally had been up for 28 hours. We had to run across Sydney, then we had to run across that island, scuba dive, go out in this boat, then we had to run down this mile and a half beach to find Phil.

When we found him and he said go back down the mile and a half beach and back into Sydney… We had no water. We’d been running… That’s why the second episode starts with me falling over and Michael’s concern. People didn’t understand why he was so concerned. He was watching me go down, physically, for the last three hours, until I was gasping. So when I fell over he thought maybe I’d had a heart attack or something. That’s why he was so concerned.

RNO: Was it really a dehydration cramp?

Mel: It was dehydration cramping and just plain exhaustion.

RNO: It’s impressive you can do all of that in your 70s.

Mel: Impressive to you, but you could use other words. (Mel laughs)

RNO: What was it like running around in giant kangaroo costumes and moon shoes?

Mel: Well, again, on Season 14, most of the Roadblocks and Detours were fun. You could see each other, you could root for each other. Even the Detours and Roadblocks on this one were hard. Putting on that kangaroo suit almost exhausted me. We had already put on two wet suits that leg, then it was hot… We could go on.

Then you had to spring – you couldn’t walk. I see the cowboys and the Globetrotters, they go B O I N G… B O I N G… And I’m just, boingboingboingboingboing! Si I did three boings for every one boing they did. It was a nightmare! It was a friggin’ nightmare.

RNO: It seems like they’re setting the bar higher this season. Just to get your first clue you had to solve the QANTAS puzzle.

Mel: Yeah. I was really sorry to see Kris & Amanda go out because they both would have been able to withstand the physical stuff. And Kris is so pretty, it was sad to lose him.

RNO: I’m always happy to see you guys on TV because you seem to have such a great father-son bond. What sort of feedback do you get from others about your appearances on the race?

Mel: Much of Season 14 we were rather heroic in other people’s minds. We were a gay father and a gay son. So many gay kids have had parents who have rejected them and [even] turned them out. So, on that level, people who aren’t gay weren’t understanding what a thrill it was for these kids to see that happening.

On the other level, just plain old straight people thought it was really fun too. So we really got a lot of praise. I spoke five times in Orange County this past weekend and a lot of them were gay crowds. We had standing ovations because we represented something to them. But the general public, I don’t think they understand what we were representing.

RNO: Is there anything else you'd like to tell our readers about your experiences this time around on the race?

Mel: I think what was most important for us is that we decided from the beginning was that nothing could goad us into harsh words between each other. It seems to me that works in real life as well. Don’t blame, you know? When things go wrong, just help each other get through it. There’s nothing that will help from blaming each other.

So I think doing what we do in real life there really paid off because we were equipped to say, “If we make a mistake, that’s normal. Let’s just move on.” When you see some of these couples and they are together and they just are arguing all the time… Or poor Ron & Christina, oh, my God. They’re not having fun at all. If life isn’t fun, check out.

RNO: That seems like very good advice. Thank you so much for talking to RealityNewsOnline and congratulations to you and your son for all the success you are having.

Why play again?Michael's such a fan of this program. He has watched from day one and was so thrilled to play. We were bummed to get evicted because of a bad taxi. He called and said, "Dad we have a second chance at once in a lifetime. Only 22 get to play each season. Why would you miss that?" So I agreed to go.

Obviously you have a strong bond already. As you didn't win, what do you get out of racing?We sat down before The Race and established the rule that we were doing this for fun. To fight, argue or complain would stop the fun and ruin our only purpose for being here. We would have loved to win the million, but it was more important to have a good time together.

Did your strategy change after the first time?Yes, we learned several things. If you get in a bad taxi, don't stay with it. Second, you never stop racing. The couple who won season 14 would be up at the front on the plane bargaining with people to take their seats and doing research when the rest of us were just happy to sit down. Third, when you get a chance to rest, die in the spot. Don't chatter away the night at the pit stop like we did our first time. Mike also made us pack lighter. His suitcase was filled with food bars because he's vegan and he almost starved last time.

Was it tougher?The second time was not a charm. It proved to be harder. I think, with all of these great competitive teams coming back, the producers added a lot of stamina games. Against bull riders and Globetrotters, we just weren't up for the physical side. Even Michael was older than all but three racers. Together we were 110. We felt sad, but understand why they upped the ante. The first day it took 28 hours to get to Sydney and then I ran at least four or five miles with a pack. When Phil said we were still racing, I thought, "This will not do."

Everyone looked like they wanted to punch Phil in the face.We were all absolutely exhausted. I have to brag. Big Easy said when we were slouched over a drinking fountain, "I hope when I'm 50 I can do what you're doing at 70."

How cold was the frog pond?It had gotten very cold and the mud below the water was even colder. Then it started raining. And we were in those unflattering diapers. I was in there just two minutes short of an hour. After 45 minutes, Michael started begging me to get out. He thought I was just being stubborn but in it, you don't realize how it's affecting you. A producer came to get me. We were really in bad shape. The medical team treated us for hypothermia.

Your line about preferring death by pond over at home in bed was powerful.I meant it. I really didn't want to give up or go out so soon. I was afraid people would think I was a big quitter. I wanted to find that frog so badly. I hate frogs now.

You joked you'd be there in a walker next time. Would you do The Race again?They should have a senior citizens' Race. It would be amusing with all our dementia. No one would remember where we went or where we were going. Maybe not even who our partner was. With so many old people in this country, I think people would get a kick out of it. But I won by being there at 70 and representing.

Mel White says he would never have quit “The Amazing Race” if his son Mike hadn’t insisted. But as soon as the decision was made, the 70-year-old competitor realized it was the best thing they could have done.

The father and son team were the most recent pair to leave the race after deciding the conditions of the Detour in Japan -- looking for a plastic frog in a pit of mud in frigid temperatures -- were just too challenging to continue.

“There were all these people yelling at us and throwing mud, and the mud they picked up inadvertently had little rocks in it, and so I was bleeding from the forehead and both shoulders, not seriously bleeding, but it was adding to the pain, the misery,” Mel tells CTV.ca over the phone.

“Our body temperatures had fallen so much that we were officially diagnosed with hypothermia, that’s what disallowed us from going back into the mud to find a damn frog.”

Mel says he and Mike, who wasn’t available for the interview, were searching in the mud for almost an hour before his son (with the help of the producers) convinced him they had to get out.

By the time they got to the van to warm up, both Mel and Mike were shaking -- and couldn’t stop.

“We shook for about an hour after that,” says Mel. “They ‘de-muddified’ us and put us in electric blankets.”

Mel and Mike were well enough to make it to the finish line -- and even were ahead of last place team Jaime and Cara -- but since they hadn’t completed the task of finding a frog, they were the second team of Season 18 to be eliminated.

The pair didn’t get as far as they did the first time -- they placed sixth on Season 14 -- but Mel says this race was a lot more physically demanding and was definitely taking a toll on his body. He adds though that it was something that bothered his son more than it bothered him.

On the very first leg of the race, Mel says they travelled 28 hours non-stop from California to Australia and then ran about four and a half miles, did a scuba diving challenge and arrived at what they thought was the Pit Stop only to find out they were still racing and had to run a mile and a half back to the ferry.

“Michael was so scared … he’d been watching me run for at least four or five hours and he kept saying ‘You don’t have to do this. It’s OK, Dad’ because I was gasping but I said, ‘No I’ve got to do this’ and that’s when I tipped over … that’s when he cried because he thought I’d had a heart attack.”

All of this led to Mike’s decision that they had to quit the race, says Mel.

“We ran five miles the first day, then jumped on these kangaroo things (in Australia) and then got into that mud so physically Michael was seeing me wear down and I think he was just at the end of his rope.”

Mel says seeing how concerned Mike was about him really opened his eyes as to how much his son cares about him.

“That’s been kind of a lesson I’ve learned as to how much that kid cares. He loves this ‘Race’ … but when he said, ‘I’m outta here, this race isn’t as important to me as you are,’ I got another idea of how much that kid loves me.”

There will be no more “Amazing Race” in Mel’s future, but he says there are plenty of other ways he can spend quality time with his son.

One of these ways is watching his son -- a successful Hollywood filmmaker, who wrote and acted in movies like “School of Rock” and “Orange County” -- while he works.

“Mike is so up to his neck, he has a new HBO series coming out, he’s really busy so what I like doing as a retired person is hanging around him and watching him direct,” says Mel.

“I’ll (also) stay over at his house and we go out to vegan dinners. There’s lots to do.”

“Enlightened” was originally scheduled to make its debut in January, but when White was invited to the “Amazing Race” all-stars reunion, HBO agreed to postpone the show, and he and his dad went back on the road. This time around, the challenges were more grueling. Following a near-naked slog through a Japanese mud pit from which Mel emerged with hypothermia, Mike decided to call it quits. They were sent to an “elimination station” on an island off the coast of Thailand for three weeks, with no phones and no computers and nothing to do but sit by the pool. “Considering how much work I’d walked away from and how many people it had impacted — I was like, what have I done? But it’s fun to have an adventure.”

How many indie film auteurs get the green light to create a series on HBO, then postpone finishing it to compete in “The Amazing Race”? The correct answer is, just one: Mike White.

White has crafted a career out of off-kilter moves. As a screenwriter, he alternates between charming but uncomfortable films about awkward, lonely people (“Chuck and Buck,” “Year of the Dog”) and more mainstream, poppy hits (“School of Rock,” “Nacho Libre”). He got his start as a writer-producer on “Dawson’s Creek” before going on to “Freaks and Geeks,” and now has co-created the HBO series “Enlightened” with Laura Dern, who also stars in it.

But he says one of the best things he’s ever done is to compete in “The Amazing Race,” which he did in 2009 with his 70-year-old dad, minister and gay activist Mel White. When the show invited them back for an all-stars season earlier this year, just as White was starting post-production on “Enlightened,” he couldn’t say no. Just days into the race, however, his father collapsed and they were eliminated.

“As they were taking us away to the ambulance, I was thinking, 'How am I going to tell the people at HBO?'” he says between bites of brown rice and veggies at a vegan restaurant in West Hollywood. “They had to furlough our whole post-production team!” But being stranded in reality-TV loser limbo for two weeks with no phone or computer was kind of nice, he insists, “because I had to let go, accept.”

5. “The Amazing Race” Connection. “Race” fans will notice that a few former contestants like Victor Jih pop up on “Enlightened” – Mike White and his father Mel White competed on Season 14 of “AR” and again in 2011 on “AR: Unfinished Business,” and he’s stayed in touch with some of his former competitors.

“Yeah. There’s a couple ‘Amazing Race’ cameos in there, but, you know, that’s just because I run out of ideas…,” White quips.

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan